Too much time to think
by Crimson1
Summary: Schu goes to get Farf down from a night in his straitjacket, but Farf has a few surprises in store. Hints of SchuxBrad, and definate FarfxSchu. YAOI! And rather dark, if I do say so myself. evil fangirl cackle


A metallic smell, like sweat and blood, fills his every breath, the texture of the air reminiscent of mold, decay...death. He knows the smell of death. It can be so sweet, savoring, and even deliciously sensual if you're in the right mood, but tonight he isn't. Not tonight. No. Tonight...he has to let the dog loose.  
  
Humming beneath his breath to keep the din of silence at bay, Schuldrich's lithe figure moves further down, descending the last set of steps, and into the long corridor at the bottom. His destination is close at hand now. Squinting in the meager light, he can almost make out the outline of a door. A cell door.  
  
Yes, it is a cell. At least, he always refers to it that way, even though Crawford cringes at every mention of the term.   
  
Crawford. Now there's something to brighten the German's darkening mood. Tall, muscular, smug, son-of-a-bitch Crawford. Strictly business and stiff as they come. Even in bed.  
  
A grin breaks across the red-head's face.   
  
In bed. Crawford is especially stiff in bed, but in a manner Schuldrich doesn't mind half as much. It is the only time the obstinate American will ever let his guard down, if just a little. In those twilight hours of mingled bodies and groans of pleasure, Brad Crawford is completely at his disposal, whether the stuffed-shirt will admit it or not.  
  
Enough musing, though. The large, rusted, metal door is in front of him now, sneering back at him with an affectionate slap in the face. He stops humming.   
  
This wouldn't be such a chore if Farfarello wasn't so damn calm about it every time. The Irishman just takes what is given to him, staring blankly with that single, haunting eye, and speaking only a handful of depressing words, if any at all. It can really get on your nerves.  
  
"Punishment's over." Schuldrich calls inside, leaning for a moment on the door frame, after prying it open to reveal the prisoner inside. His features are fashioned into a deceptive smirk, though something in his eyes doesn't quite fit the picture. "Brad wants your word this time; no more running off, mutilating the public, unless it's a section of public we've been ordered to mutilate. Understand? I can't let you down if you don't. You know what a tight-ass Brad can be."  
  
Inside the cell, everything is draped in shadow, even the cowering shadows. It isn't a very large room; a small bedroom only, if you can even call it that. It's the type of room you'd expect to find cobwebs clinging to the corners, but even thriving arachnids cannot survive down here.  
  
There is a cold, metal floor, a high ceiling, and four, padded walls. Nothing more. That is, other than the dangling hook suspending a striking albino, hanging upside down, and locked in a coarse, white straitjacket.  
  
His face is turned away from the door, towards the back of the room, but the waiting red-head can still make out the slight shimmer of white hair as he nods, agreeing to the terms presented for him to be released.  
  
"Good for you. Not that I expect you to keep your promise, but that's not my problem."  
  
Soundless footsteps enter fully inside the room now, carrying a familiar rhythm to Farfarello's sharp ears. He could pick out his teammates steps in a crowded room without thinking twice about it. No one walks the way Schuldrich does - filled with such confidence, attitude, charm, and pulsing with more knowledge and secrets of everyone around him, they know to be intimidated.  
  
Funny. Farfarello has never found him intimidating.  
  
Slinking an arm around the bound albino, Schuldrich reaches up to unlatch the hook from the back of the straitjacket, carefully lowering his companion down to the ground. It isn't a very easy task. Farfarello is practically all muscle - heavy, and unable to add much assistance. The German may be strong, but in much different endeavors than this.  
  
Try as he may, Farfarello is too much for him, and he starts to lose his grip. Luckily, the madman swings his feet down just in time to catch himself, though he still falls somewhat clumsily against Schuldrich in the process.  
  
"Thanks for the dead weight." the red-head grumbles, gripping Farfarello's shoulders to steady them. "You couldn't have helped me out a little?"  
  
"Why...?" whispers the Irishman's low, toneless voice, turning his head to stare back at his teammate. "You're the one who locks me up. Why should I help you?"  
  
Schuldrich releases an annoyed laugh, very short and devoid of humor. "I'm not the one giving the orders here, Farf. We're all here to do a job, remember? Now hold still if you want this thing off."  
  
Buckles and knots are undone, achingly pulled away, and Farfarello is free, slipping the jacket off in front of him.   
  
Watching as the morbidly placid young man turns back around, still holding the jacket in scarred hands, Schuldrich's eyes trace the shape and form of the figure before him, offset by a feeling of unease he can't quite define.  
  
"Whenever I put you in that thing, you're always raving your head off..." he begins, forgetting to mask his out-of-place mood with the usual arrogance. "...but by the time I take it off, you're so fucking composed about everything. What gives?"  
  
Studying Schuldrich's face far more excruciatingly than the red-head had examined his, Farfarello bears no readable expression whatsoever. He rarely does. "Too much time to think." comes his even reply, almost distant and thoughtful.  
  
"Heh. Isn't that a good thing?"  
  
"That is never a good thing."  
  
Schuldrich represses a shiver, suddenly wanting very much to escape the confines of this room, though he can't quite find the legs to take him through the door.  
  
"I would have thought you of all people would agree with me." Farfarello adds, unconsciously tightening and loosening his grip on the edges of the jacket still clenched in his fists. "Don't you hate it when people think too much?"  
  
"Other people...sure I do. But that's different. I wouldn't mind if it was my own thoughts rattling around. What harm can that do?"  
  
Slowly, with awakening comprehension, Farfarello nods, and one hand suddenly lets go of the corner of the straitjacket, uncaring, while his golden eye bores back with piercing precision into Schuldrich's.  
  
The red-head doesn't even see what strikes him across the face as he falls, but before he has time to consider it, he lands on the cold, hard floor, dazed and confused.  
  
Farfarello hit him.  
  
"What the hell..." he mutters, slightly winded from the force of the blow that had collided with the side of his head. "What the hell are you doing?"  
  
Rough and methodical, the albino is forcing the sleeves of the jacket over his companions arms, fitting it around his body, and fastening it closed. "Giving you some time to think." he replies, just as monotone and emotionless as before.  
  
Schuldrich's entire body tenses as he shakes his dizziness away, struggling to get out of Farfarello's grasp, but the task is already done before he can succeed.   
  
"Fuck. How did you do that so fast?"  
  
"Practice."  
  
"Real funny." Schuldrich growls, rolling onto his side to glare back at Farfarello, who is now sitting comfortably beside him. "You've had your little fun, now get this off me."  
  
"Not yet." the Irishman gives in answer, still overly calm and cool-headed, for a lunatic anyway. "I want to know how long you can last like that. How long do you think you can handle being me?"  
  
Schuldrich freezes. He doesn't like where this is going. The fabric of the jacket is hurting his skin, harsh and biting. The unnatural stretch of his arms tied back around his body is starting to burn, pulling them nearly out of joint. The feeling of being defenseless at the mercy of someone so deadly - like himself - is tying his stomach in knots.  
  
Someone like him should never feel this way.  
  
"Don't make me call Crawford down here." the red-head warns, focusing all his energy on keeping himself from trembling. "I'd hate to have to punish you again."  
  
"Crawford isn't here. He went out."  
  
"I can still-"  
  
"He's too far away. He won't hear you."  
  
"Then I'll call Nagi."  
  
"He won't care."  
  
Damn. This situation isn't turning out in Schuldrich's favor one bit.   
  
Lifting himself into a sitting position, the German keeps his eyes trained closely on Farfarello, not trusting him in the slightest. Worst of all, Schuldrich finally realizes just how damp and chill the floor really is, as it begins to seep into his skin through the thin layer of clothes on his body. Why does the room seem so much smaller...?  
  
Schuldrich can suddenly hear everything in the room with frightening clarity. The drip of some unknown liquid from a pipe in the ceiling. The creak of the door as it twitches, left partially open. The unbearably loud wheeze of his own breathing, so very panicked and unsteady. And...the soft rustle of cloth as Farfarello slips something from his pocket.  
  
Wide eyes stare in increasing trepidation, and the breath catches in Schuldrich's throat. Farfarello is fingering his beloved knife with the narrow blade and crescent handle. His fingers smooth over the surface of it so delicately, almost tender, that when an eye of tawny aberration suddenly flicks up, away from the weapon and back into Schuldrich's fixated face, the bound red-head has new reasons to be afraid.  
  
"What are going to do, Farfie...?" he asks through quivering lips, overcome with cold and unrecognizable fear.  
  
Farfarello tilts his head slightly, unfocusing his gaze as if concentrating very hard, and searching for the right answer to that question.   
  
Perhaps thinking too much really isn't a good thing.  
  
"I could do whatever I want..." the albino begins, vaguely, but far too eager, all the same. "...anything at all...and no one would come to your rescue..."  
  
"Stop it." Schuldrich cuts in, fighting very hard to keep himself under control. "What are you trying to do? Scare me? Is that it? You want to make good ol' Schu quake in his boots. Well, it won't work. This is nothing."  
  
"Really...? Then why are you shaking?"  
  
Schuldrich doesn't have an answer for that. He feels the way he often does when his telepathy gets the better of him. Those throbbing times in his life when he loses what little control he has and starts twitching and trembling like the opium fiend, deprived of his next fix.  
  
He can't breathe. If the air was stuffy and lush with decay before, it is nothing compared to the nauseating thickness around him now. How can Farfarello live down here? There's no room at all. Everything is so tight and unclosed, crawling with infectious despair. And the sounds of the cell are even more acute now. Dripping water like a downpour. That screeching creak of the door. His own breathing like someone hyperventilating, which he is borderline of doing himself. Not to mention that damn knife. Why can't Farfarello stop fiddling with it?  
  
"Come on...Farf...I don't have all night here...just...get this off me, okay?"  
  
Farfarello stops fingering the knife between his fingers, placing all of his attention back on his prisoner. "No." he replies, without a trace of anything, not even indifference.  
  
The halting sound of Schuldrich's words seems to have intrigued him, however, and he gradually gets to his knees, crawling over to the red-head a few feet away. Without thinking, Schuldrich flinches, curling his legs in against his chest. He doesn't much care for the cryptic look in Farfarello's penetrating eye.  
  
It says so much without a voice to speak its intentions.  
  
"Hold on...wha...what are doing...?"  
  
Abrasively silent, Farfarello grips Schuldrich's shoulders, pushing him back, down against the floor. The red-head is shaking uncontrollably now, his breath and pulse racing, thundering throughout the room. A part of him wants so much to struggle, fight his teammate off, but he can't. His body is limp.  
  
"Fa...Farf...please...please don't..."  
  
But the stinging cold of metal against his cheek crushes the hopes he may have had at escaping what is about to happen.  
  
Schuldrich's body is flat on the floor, and he can't seem to bring himself to move, even as the calm and quiet Irishman slides a leg over to the other side of his body, straddling his waste. They are deadly close now, too close. Bending down, Farfarello's warm breath brushes the side of his face, the knife running down his neck and chest with only enough pressure to send shivers over his entire body.  
  
Fuck, the room is so damn small. The straitjacket is burning him, tearing him apart. And all that noise. Why the fuck won't that pipe stop dripping?!  
  
"I wonder..." Farfarello whispers, like eyelashes blinking away the Winter snowflakes landing on their tips. "...I wonder...if your blood is red like mine..."  
  
Won't someone shut that fucking door!?!  
  
"...or...is it like the sunset...the way your hair is on fire...?" the albino continues, running his free hand through those long, orange strands. "...or...bright blue...like the noon sky...to match your eyes..."   
  
A tear streams down Schuldrich's cheek, striking the floor as it falls. God, even that sounds so deafening in this accursed cell.  
  
"Or maybe...maybe it's black...yes...black like the storm that refuses to pass...stubborn...just like you..." The arm holding the knife rises above Farfarello's head, his fingers clenched tightly around the handle. "Why don't we find out...together..."  
  
"You crazy fuck! Why are you doing this!?"  
  
"I told you...too much time to think..."  
  
Schuldrich jerks his head away as the knife comes plunging downwards, his eyes held tightly closed, and his audible sobs no longer held at bay. He's crying outright now. Hell has frozen over; the guilty one is crying. Fuck, this freezing room is Hell.  
  
But either time is moving in slow-motion, or Farfarello has decided to make Schuldrich suffer with the anticipation of pain and death, because the knife doesn't make contact.  
  
Schuldrich knows better than to believe in things like faith and hope. He just waits, expecting to feel the blade driving into him at any moment. Still, it doesn't happen.   
  
He can sense the walls closing in on him completely, feel his shoulders ripping from their sockets, and hear the swell of insufferable chaos echoing all around. The pipe has surely burst, the door is off its hinges, his bawling and staggered breaths are as frenzied as a scream, and the knife is about to shatter his eardrums when it hits.  
  
Nothing.  
  
Pushed beyond any and all limits, Schuldrich peeks up at Farfarello through slitted eyes, afraid to look him full on. Where is the knife? He isn't holding it anymore. He's just looking at him. Looking at him...  
  
The knife is on the floor beside them, but the sounds around them are a roar. Why does the unexpected offer so little solace?  
  
Sobbing just as fiercely as ever, Schuldrich flinches away when Farfarello leans in, so close to him, he can make out every fleck of red in the tawny eye approaching. That eye begins to close, though, and full lips, slightly parted, make contact with his own before Schuldrich even realizes what is happening.  
  
Every prick of noise stops dead.  
  
It is the most peculiar sensation. Not that Schuldrich has never been kissed by anyone before, or that he has never been kissed by another man before, either. This is Farfarello. Farfarello. Who would have ever guessed he would be so skilled with so little experience.  
  
The albino's mouth completely envelopes him, not literally so much, but in the gentle intensity of it. He isn't harsh and forceful the way one would expect, but needing and giving at the same time. Even with contact his lips are only parted the tiniest bit, the tip of his tongue brushing against Schuldrich's lips, catching perhaps the most fleeting caress of the red-head's tongue in return, and being just enough to be what it is.  
  
Incredible.  
  
Schuldrich's breath is completely gone when Farfarello finally pulls away, and he sighs aloud, feeling light-headed and even more confused than before.  
  
"Hmmm...you taste like nicotine and sugar...bittersweet..." The Irishman states thoughtfully, with a curious lick of his lips.  
  
Shaking his head to clear it, Schuldrich is having a much harder time reaching rational thought again. "Wh...why did you do that...?"  
  
"I was just curious."  
  
"So...you aren't going to kill me?"  
  
"No."  
  
"You were just messing with my head?"  
  
"I suppose you could say that. Are you angry?"  
  
Taking a deep breath, Schuldrich shudders, but from something far more pleasurable than fear. The room stretches so far in each direction now, leaving them all the space in the world, and the only sound is of his own contented breathing.  
  
Even the straitjacket feels comfortable.  
  
"I should be angry." Schuldrich grins, with drooping eyelids blinking back at the flushed young man on top of him. "But...I can't think of any good reasons right now."  
  
Farfarello smiles. "I told you it isn't good when you have too much time to think. You start seeing things. Hearing things. Believing things you shouldn't."  
  
"Next time, I'll take your word for it. Now, will you take this fucking thing off me, already?"  
  
The pressure in the room is no longer ready to pop, but deflated back to its usual nature. Still as unpleasant as hell, but far more tolerable.   
  
Lifting himself from Schuldrich's pinned body, Farfarello gets to his feet, reaching down to help pull his companion up as well. Immediately, he starts to undo the straitjacket, and even helps slip it off by pulling in close to Schuldrich from behind, and tugging at the sleeves with arms slid around his waist. He can feel the delicious tremor that whispers its way up the red-head's spine, reacting to this intimate position. The jacket hits the floor with a soft rustle and jingling of buckles. Farfarello doesn't move away.  
  
"You're beautiful." the albino whispers, coiling his arms to pull Schuldrich closer against him, his lips held right beside his teammate's ear. "I've always thought so."  
  
"Don't you hate things that are beautiful...?" Schuldrich shivers, laying his head back against Farfarello's shoulder. "The beauty of God's creation, and all that."  
  
Cool hands play over Schuldrich's skin, slipping up under his shirt, and applying just enough pressure to define every muscle as they move. "You aren't beautiful for Him. You are beautiful for you. Beautiful for me."  
  
"What...uh...makes me...beautiful...?"  
  
"Everything." breathes out Farfarello's arousing voice, working his hands to send the red-head into rapture. "Long hair like the sky at dusk, eyes so full of life and ambition, smooth skin, a toned and graceful body that moves like no one else. Just...beautiful."  
  
Schuldrich's breathing is becoming a bit labored again, but he isn't afraid this time, just a little unsure, even if every nerve-ending in his body is very, very sure.  
  
Freeing his hands, Farfarello turns Schuldrich to face him, eyeing him up and down to take in his reaction, which is quite stimulated for someone who usually hates being so submissive. The worked-up German can barely stand straight.  
  
Smirking at Farfarello's bemused expression as he looks him over, Schuldrich steps in closer, slinking his arms around the albino's neck. "So, this is what you want. And you had to reduce me to a sniveling child to ask for it?"  
  
Farfarello cocks his head to the side, but doesn't answer, merely breathing in the scent of Schuldrich's body so near his own, like a cheap motel and expensive cologne all in one.  
  
"Next time you need to get your mind off thinking too much..." the red-head goes on, leaning in a little closer. "...I'll be more than happy to help you forget all about it."  
  
This time, it is Schuldrich's lips claiming Farfarello's, pushing the sensation just far enough to be deeper than the first, but with the same teasing resistance holding back.   
  
Other than a few devilish thoughts of each other, neither of them are thinking much of anything right now.  
  
  
*****owari*****  
  
  
Ooooo, that was fun. My second yaoi fic ever, and much better than the first. Okay, it got a little fluffy at the end, but not too much, and I love the way they kept passing control back and forth. I was just in a naughty, fangirl mood for some reason. Hope you enjoyed, I sure did, and please, PLEASE REVIEW!! Because I love you.  
  
Break from Ken angst, but still working like a bee on "It's too late to confess now..." 


End file.
